


Non Sum qualis Eram

by Like_a_Hurricane



Series: Pernicious Prompting [28]
Category: Loki: Agent of Asgard, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: D/s themes, M/M, Old Loki is an asshole, Spoilers - Original Sin, btw Siege spoilers too, first attempt at playing directly with Marvel 616, like Civil War, loose adaptation, loose and a bit hand-wavy, mentions of events as far back as Civil War, right before that whole Siege of Asgard thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 18:31:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2319212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Like_a_Hurricane/pseuds/Like_a_Hurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set shortly after both the first volume of <i>Agent of Asgard</i> and also the story arc of <i>Original Sin: Thor & Loki</i>: with Kid!Loki gone, Loki in his newly-adolescent body is still trying to come to terms with the unfamiliar sensations of acute guilt. He doesn't like it, but after meeting his elder self and being reminded how being more callous about such things tended to make him behave like an utterly ruthless ass-hat, he's willing to embrace what he would normally consider to be weaknesses, if it means spitting in destiny's eye and defying the expectations of his elder self and Asgard alike.</p><p>It's inconvenient that Tony Stark is once more taking notice of him, however. He has more history with the inventor than any of the other Avengers ever knew, but Stark still sees the kid who tagged along after Thor, and thus seems to be struggling a great deal to keep himself convinced that the Loki he once knew died in the Siege of Asgard. Not that he doesn't suspect the little shit had a backup plan, so when Loki seems to recall a few key details that his younger, tabula rasa self could not have known, the inventor gets a bit suspicious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Non Sum qualis Eram

**Author's Note:**

> _Non Sum quails Eram_ \- "I am not what I was."
> 
> I think the only thing that could really persuade Loki to soften up his usual defensive exterior and allow himself sentiment where before he loathed it, is strictly to spite his elder self by being less like him. He's just that damn contrary.

It had been bad enough seeing a pesky little rascal of a kid, with too much heart in his leaf-green eyes, too much innocence, making him look more like a son of the Loki that a certain obscenely wealthy engineer and inventor had once known so well, than like Loki himself. Of _course_ it could get worse.

Not that anyone aside from Tony Stark himself and the older version of Loki had been aware of how intimately those two usually-enemies had known one another, if only in the physical sense. There had been a contract, actually. Tony had ensnared the god of lies into it because he had been after some very particular traits in his chosen partner. He had made Loki an offer that the trickster could not refuse––or, at least, that Loki hadn’t _wanted_ to refuse.

 

_So fragile, even now, Stark, strong as you have made yourself, you tremble for me. Oh, don’t stop whimpering now; I do love how sweet you sound each time you impale yourself upon me..._

 

Shaking his head quickly, Tony pushed that thought back into the lockdown box it belonged in, with all the rest of his knowledge about the older trickster that wasn’t battle- or otherwise Avengers-pertinent.

No need to recall the only visitor he’d had, in his long convalescence while Norman Osborn was in power, while Tony had been beyond the reach of earthly sciences, but not beyond the reach of a god’s magic.

No need to recall that the god's visit was the last memory uploaded before Tony's waking from that restorative coma, and thus had been the freshest thought in his mind, before he had found himself armored up and joining the defense of Asgard while Osborn and his Avengers-replacements had been laying siege to the place. Nevermind that during the siege, they had all watched Loki die in order to give them all a bit more time to stop the world from ending just once more, starting with Asgard.

That memory had been of a dream generated while his brain's recuperative reboot was paused, and put to rest just a little while by magic, so that a familiar dream-walker could cut through the delirious nightmares and meet him one last time. It was the only memory Tony retained from between the last save-point for his own memories he had, and the date upon which he woke up with so much time missing, to be faced with so many people wearing scars he couldn’t remember being responsible for, reluctantly asking for his help to take down Norman Osborn and his Dark Avengers.

He was a bit pissed off that Loki hadn’t warned him about that, but perhaps he hadn’t known how extensive that loss of memory would be. Maybe to a god, it didn’t seem like much time to miss, really. Tony could never be entirely sure about things like that, with Loki.

It still would’ve made his life rebuilding and making amends, in the months since then, a bit less horrible, to have gotten a few hints before he woke. If he had only known a bit better, just where he’d really stood, during all that time he’d lost...

Even after months of other madness occurring around the globe ever since, and regaining more of his missing memories, however shredded at times, Tony still remembered that last dream in clear and vivid detail, and he knew Loki had gone out of his way to make sure of it. Somehow, he could tell.

 

_The trickster had seemed tired, in the dream, even as he still burned with the same chaotic life-force that he always seemed to carry with him._

_I have to die, Stark; it’s the only way to be free of all of I’ve done, and all that destiny has made of me._

 

A deep breath, and he forced himself to pull back from the unexpected memory glitch. That was another problem with Loki-related memories.

Dammit.

Again, Tony shook himself back into the present. He drained the rest of his coffee and then reached for the pot he’d had the foresight to place on a nearby side-table, to refill his mug, and sip still a bit more.

He had enough episodes of zoning out lately that it had started getting worrisome.

This time, at least, he was pretty sure it was the kid’s presence in the tower that set it off, yet again. Well. Now it was the not-quite-a-kid-anymore teen model with frightfully similar fashion sense and affinity for wearing horned gold headpieces, anyway. He still seemed definitively Loki-shaped. Tony still wasn’t sure how to classify the transformation, yet. Though it now felt like his past affair with the older version of the god had been ages and ages ago, Tony knew it still hadn’t been long ago enough to account for quite how quickly the reborn-trickster had, er, _developed_ since then.

Clint had been right, though. Loki’s makeover had been decidedly just a bit One-Direction-y. Except that Tony had met those guys in an airport once, and the inventor hadn’t at any point at the time thought about how any of their faces might look, peering up from between Tony’s legs. He could not say the same for Loki now, hairstyle comparisons aside, especially the more he heard him go into shakespearean-dramatic-hero mode, and hit familiar tones of voice that affected Tony in some very particular ways, after some... conditioning.

Tony was uncomfortable with how that was affecting him.

The fact that he had been asleep and having a pleasantly erotic dream, and the only other Avenger present in the tower when the two brothers godly made their abrupt landing back down on Earth mid-argument, had been a nightie-clad Natasha left to knock on Tony’s door until he pried it open to ask what she had against his harmless dreamtime sex-life––well, none of it had made this situation less than utterly frustrating in every possible sense.

This was a recipe for an awful day already, and it was barely dawn: sexy people all in one room and all either scantily-clad or armor-clad respectively, and even the likes of _Tony Stark_ couldn’t escape the awkwardness enough to properly appreciate it as the scene really deserved to be appreciated. Maddening, truly.

Shaking _that_ half-asleep train of thought aside too, he focused again on the still-disconcertingly-jailbait-looking trickster in his living room.

Something had changed beyond the ki––Loki’s height and apparent rapid advancement to sexual maturity, because while that hair said “boy band”, the trickster’s body, the expressions on his face, and the cadence of his words made him seem older. Or maybe Tony was simply struggling more now, with keeping him firmly in the “super-creepy awkward Death-by-Mjolnir-bait” category, the longer they were in the same room, and Loki kept making such bitingly sarcastic comments at Thor’s haranguing questions and demands for Loki to keep within Heimdall’s sight for a change.

Remembering the first time he’d seen this new body of Loki’s, Tony had noticed how much more sober the young god had seemed. It had been a familiar sort of sobriety; the sort that Tony himself recalled feeling far too often. He could almost swear that he’d seen the god catch a glimpse of his own reflection and wince, not once but twice, upon reviewing the security footage of his little break-in.

Best not to think about all the data the little shit had erased after aiming an enraged Thor at Tony that day, as a distraction, followed shortly after by an even more enraged Hulk, all within their own tower, wreaking havoc on that entire floor of the building. Those repairs had been _extensive_.

Something distant in the back of Tony’s head wondered how a tabula rasa-brained Loki like the weird little kid he’d seen tagging along behind Thor like the great blond god was his savior (because, frankly, he was, repeatedly) had known about the Thor-clone, and just how unholy pissed off the Thunderer would certainly be, at the mere hint of hearing that Tony had made _that_ mistake again.

Then again, Loki always had a knack for knowing things he shouldn’t.

 

_My name is struck from the book of Hel. I will return._

_I sense a catch._

_As ever, dear, you’re terribly perceptive._

_What is it, then?_

_I... have taken measures to preserve myself, but there is only so much to be done, without entrapping myself into the same cycles of escalating villainy that ever I have been caught in. None in Asgard wish me to be anything other than I am. They want no serpents for friends, when they are so much more comfortable stomping a poisonous creature like myself into the dust, and then punishing me further when I respond with a lethal bite._

_You’re still blaming them, Loki. You know you can’t just-_

_As ever I will, until I can be free of too many memories and too-solid lies I have been telling_ myself _, over and over again, for a few millennia, Tony. I blame them whenever my lips are moving, because I know the truth too well, but I have made it impossible to directly address even in my own mind, whenever my ire is galled. It is all habit, these vitriolic tendencies, of a sort too deeply ingrained in these heavy old bones, and in the rhythms of the universe that I am trapped within the tunes of. I have never deserved forgiveness, and so I must become someone else, in order to change the beat, and the nature of my story._

_So this is goodbye, then?_

_Of c-_

 

Tony’s reverie snapped back into reality as the argument unfolding before him between gods sudden escalated in volume, momentarily in parallel with memory for a single disconcerting second.

“ _Of course it is_ , Thor! I thought it would be enough to-” Loki, the living, breathing one, snarled, then stopped himself short with a grimace of self-loathing that looked far too out of place on such a young face. “The All-Mother’s triumvirate would prefer to know their future, rather than build a new one without the comfort of foreknowledge. I cannot bear that future, if it requires me to become the same monster I once was, or worse still. I will not give them that satisfaction. I will no longer give _anyone_ that satisfaction without making them regret it severely, no matter how much time it may take me.” The young trickster’s eyes had a familiar sort of glow: one full of defiance, resentment, and hate. “You ask every soul in Asgard, Thor, if they truly want me to be forgivable, and they will tell you no. Prick their fingers with this truth-magic-steeped blade, if you feel need to borrow it and be certain of their sincerity––I certainly would––and you will find all of them dead-set on hating me for what I once was, almost every last one who so much as remembers my name. It _comforts_ them, to believe this of me.”

“Loki-” Thor tried to interrupt.

The trickster continued, heedless of his interruption, “They would not accept me in any form I took, innocent or otherwise, unless they could continue to hate me; that much I have learned, from all of these events, brother dear! So I will leave them without a comfortable villain to blame, and never trouble them again, so long as they will let me free of this web of expectations and demands you and the All-Mother both would make of me!” He threw down his sword at his brother’s feet. “I have a new enemy now, and it is their expectations. And my own.”

“What of mine? What would you hope I would see in you?”

“Yours... I suppose your expectations alone, of all of ours, stand the best chance of evolving to resemble a truth, but what that may be, I cannot begin to guess.” His eyes narrowed, a hint of genuine fear in them, and his voice was less steady as he added, “I will succeed in defying those who would entrap me into becoming again what I would prefer not to be, brother. No matter what the price, this time.” He then vanished abruptly.

The tower’s security sensors told Tony a different story, though, immediately popping up a display of the room complete with an outline where Loki had been standing a moment before, onto the screen of a tablet on the arm of the couch, which Tony tugged into his lap to get a better look at, appearing as though suddenly bored with the rest of the room.

That hadn’t been teleportation: it used too little energy.

Loki was still there.

In fact, he was sidling around the rest of the Avengers so silently that even Natasha didn’t glance his way, but the security system was tracking the traces of energy given off by the low-level magic he was using.

“Any reason you decided to have this tiff here?” Natasha asked.

“I... had hoped to persuade him to live here with myself. Where I might better keep track of him,” the Thunderer rumbled.

“He’s got his own apartment within sight of the tower. Well––it recently moved within sight of the tower, and I’m still trying to figure out how it did so without destroying anything or violating two or three different laws of physics. I can keep you updated,” Tony found himself saying. “That said, he’s probably been observing us about as much as our own security systems have been observing him.”

“He is not quite as devious as he once was, Stark. Even you admitted this.”

“Before his suspicious growth-spurt, I would’ve agreed, but he aged far too fast, and that’s ominous to me,” Natasha pointed out. “What caused that, exactly? Do we even know?”

Thor shook his head, frowning. “Admittedly, it was dwelling upon that, and his unwillingness to explain it to me, which made me more wary. Along with his actions against the hosts of Heven, despite his apparent betrayal of myself to ally with them. It was... a very familiar gambit.”

Surreptitiously, Tony stretched his legs out in front of him with a sigh. If this just so happened to almost make Loki trip over the inventor’s feet, and forced him to flail madly to avoid making physical contact or falling on his face, that was just an added bonus. Totally. Upon seeing when the tablet in his lap indicated Loki’s outline turned to glare at him suspiciously, and hesitantly, Tony had to restrain the urge to grin. It would’ve been the wrong grin. For the wrong Loki. _Right?_

“You still didn’t fully explain why exactly Asgard went to war against a place you keep calling ‘Heven’, which is frankly pretty damn ridiculous,” Tony said. “The fact Loki managed to destroy a whole invading armada of heavenly angels? That sounds in character, but uh...”

“They are not angels as humans on Earth think of them, in these days, Stark,” Thor warned. “They are fearsome creatures with no concept of honor. They do nothing without payment in return, even when conscience would demand action regardless of whether there was promise of reward of any more noble cultures within Yggdrasil’s branches.”

Tony was only halfway paying attention, because it was clear that upon looking toward Stark for a sign that he might have been noticed, the invisible trickster still in the room had himself noticed what was on the StarkTablet in Tony’s hands: the image of of Loki’s own silhouette, however faint. When next Loki looked toward the inventor’s face, Tony was staring right where the god’s face should be, and arching an eyebrow. The nanotech in his contact lenses projecting Loki’s outline for him helped, of course.

Loki remained very still. Waiting.

Without looking down, the inventor tapped a command into the tablet. Then he waited, and so did his invisible audience.

Precisely ten seconds later, Natasha’s phone went off, and she excused herself to take the call, leaving them.

That left only Thor.

“I get it, Thor, I do, but there’ s no way he’d ever agree to live here. If, as you keep insisting, this really is a whole new trickster we’re dealing with-” _Was that another cringe? That was. What the hell?_ The old Loki never used to have such clear tells as that. Not for guilt, anyway. Usually it was anger or nothing. “-then his newly mature body is in its teenage years, by the looks of it. His fresh-wiped soul is being a typical adolescent, so rationally or no, he wants space, and he wants to rebel against what people want him to be. I dunno why you’re even a little bit surprised, there.”

The invisible god of lies stood up straight, then, head cocked, clearly managing, even just via the faint shape the tower’s sensors could detect of him based on the magic he was wearing, to communicate a sense of stunned disbelief.

Well, that was actually pretty refreshing. Tony could get used to that.

“You are right, Stark,” the thunder god murmured. “I should allow him that. He has earned that much, for his efforts to change for the better.” The look he shot the inventor after that, though, was a bit uncertain.

“I’m the least forgivable Avenger in New York, right now, Thor. I’m probably the last person you want to ask about that. I’m biased, because he’s not the only one making certain efforts, and I’m hoping I don’t fail too miserably either, after a, er, recent reboot wherein I lost a lot of old data that I’m still sifting through the ashes of, trying to find all the places I fucked up between where I remember leaving off, and everything that all of you remember I’ve done, but I was too arrogant to properly store a backup of.” He grimaced a little, recalling that.

He also could’ve sworn he heard a slightly ragged exhale, barely audible, from the trickster god, at that recollection. It sounded far too similar to the sound the god had made when Tony had forgiven him in advance for dying, whether he managed to come back or not, and it made the inventor’s stomach twist into a series of uncomfortable and conflicted knots.

“That, I suppose, is fair, and very true,” Thor rumbled, sounding suspicious and yet resigned too. He then drew himself up from his chair, strolling out of the room and onto the balcony, and from thence into the air. Suddenly the weather was a bit more dreary, but people around Avengers tower were decidedly used to such abrupt weather-changes.

“You did not reveal me,” Loki said, only his teeth visible, at first. Then those too-familiar eyes, looking even more familiar for how wary and suspicious and glittering with calculation they suddenly were. Then his face and hands appeared, and last of all his clothing did too.

“Didn’t seem much point, really.”

“Then why...” Loki glanced down at the tablet. “Inform me of your own awareness, at all? My, but your sensors _have_ gotten more precise. This cloak isn’t even detectable by the likes of Strange’s best anti-theft and anti-spying wards, and yet, you found me with ease.”

That was another distant bell rung in the back of Tony’s head. “I’ve only upgraded them here in the tower ever since the Siege.”

The god glanced up again and met his gaze, expression a perfectly blank mask that might, on anyone else (particularly anyone else not sporting a set of devious gold horns especially) look unassuming. To Tony’s eye, however, something worrisome was happening at the corners of Loki’s eyes.

“Are you... worried?” The inventor sounded a little aghast.

Loki winced as though struck, all but snarling a curt, “No!” while taking a half-step back and balling his hands into fists at his sides, but where the god Tony remembered would’ve immediately glared at him and begun snapping insults or accusations, this Loki turned his head away, hair hanging in his face to partially obscure it as he tried not to think about his so-called future-self promising that he would soon develop _worry lines_.

Blinking a few times, Tony wondered what caused _that_ little snap. “Damn, you used to only ever wear that look when people compared you to Thor.” He then winced a little, himself.

The god took a few slow, deep breaths, but still didn’t look at him. Not even a tick of the old anger that usually flared when a topic like _that_ came up.

It made Tony feel cold to his bones and call himself an idiot. _Wrong Loki. Has to be. Don’t dare think otherwise, you poor fool, Stark,_ said a familiar voice in his memory: older and a bit deeper and richer than the younger version of Loki that occupied the world outside Tony’s head these days, but Loki’s voice nevertheless. _You told me yourself that we hardly shared anything between us to feel sentimental over. Screamed it, in fact._

“Then I took it back and forgave you, fuckwit,” Tony muttered, barely audible.

“Something more to say, Tony?” the god asked, making his voice lighter, now, but it sounded a bit forced. “All I got from that was, I believe, swearing.” He met the inventor’s gaze, wary but curious.

“Still recovering the data you erased, is all.”

“Lie.”

Tony scowled at him.

“You’ve recovered nothing from my old life, so far. You don’t want to.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

The trickster tilted his head slightly. “I cannot begin to imagine, but it’s the truth. Why did you not mention that I hadn’t left? Why not let Thor drag me back into that miserable argument to have his last word, or otherwise make me look a fool? That, from you, I would understand.” Loki slowly took a step closer, until his boots were just a few inches from Tony’s left knee. “This, I do not. Are you turning villain? That might be novel.”

“Turning?” Tony asked.

“You remain a hero in the eyes of the public, if not your fellow Avengers. Particularly these days. You’ve rebuilt much of your reputation, despite giving in to some older, more base indiscretions, to judge by your breath.” He managed to keep his voice steady, but somehow this deduction turned his stomach to lead. Tony had been better, sober, even a god of lies not fucking him at the time he’d made that recovery had been able to see. Healthier. More likely to live a full lifespan. “You forgot to use mouthwash, I suppose, in your rush to see what Thor and I were shouting at one another over, upon our return from Asgard and the Tenth Realm. You had not slept long enough for the hint of scotch to deteriorate.”

Tony felt a familiar twitch under one eye and realized that he had clenched his jaw, and was leveling the trickster with a glare, trying not to show any signs of acute fear, nor give in to the urge to smite. “Now _this_ sounds almost like the _old you_.”

“Would you too wish for that? Along with all of Asgard?” Loki snapped. “Would you see my old demons overwhelm me too? Would it make you feel better, in your weakness, Stark, to know that your old nemesis still has far less restraint over his impulses than do _you_?”

A long silence followed, as the inventor visibly thought it over; although it wasn’t the first time he’d ever done so, nor would it be the last, at this rate. “No. You made your choice, and it was one of the better ones I ever saw you make, but I’m also still not so naive as to believe your old self had enough good in him to _not_ do something desperate for the sake of self-preservation, maybe. You died _intentionally_ , after all. I did too, while you were arranging for that, but I didn’t know as far ahead of time as you did that I’d have to. If I’d ever thought I’d-” He cut off. “I’m biased.”

Something in the too-young god’s expression cracked a little and he looked down sharply, taking another deep breath. “Yes. Of course. All the better reason for you to avoid me, and I you.”

Tony was on his feet before he even realized he’d moved, looming over a trickster who had used to be taller than him. Damn, that felt weird, and even weirder was how Loki immediately backed away, hands raised and palms-forward appeasingly, like apology was now more habit to him than disemboweling anyone who made too-sudden moved into his personal space. How times had changed, and yet that, in pairing with his previous statement, somehow made Tony a little more suspicious. He had every right to be, especially of this one. What he didn’t feel right about was the twinge of something painfully hope-like that he felt alongside the suspicion. “Is it?” Tony asked, his tone entirely without inflection. “Why would that be?”

“I-”

“Loki.”

The god instantly met his gaze again and swallowed visibly. His pupils might’ve visibly dilated when Tony took another slow, deliberate step closer. This time, Loki stayed still, but his pulse quickened and he inhaled sharply. “Whatever you’re thinking, can you please not?”

“What, exactly, do you think that I’m thinking?”

The god tried to raise one foot to step back again, but froze when the inventor seized firm hold of his upper arm. “I don’t know what you’re thinking; you’re quite correct, there; however, if you might please, let _go_ of me, you _creep_ -”

“Why?”

 _Because I can’t make you!_ Instead of screaming that, Loki swallowed it and then insisted, more sharply this time, “Let me _go_ , Stark!”

Tony tilted his head. “You could just break my arm. Force me to let go. You won’t, though. Why?”

“I really can’t,” the trickster growled. His jaw then tightened. _Not again_ , he thought, and it was far too much struggle not to say it. Damn, but his time amongst the accursedly charming and well-meaning Young Avengers and the mild psychosis of his own too-guilty conscience (seriously, how vain was his sorry excuse for a conscience that only killing another version of himself could rile it when before, the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of others at Loki’s hands over the centuries before had scarcely even disturbed his sleep) really must have ruined him.

He had an appalling thought: was sincerity as addictive as compulsive lies? _No, of course not._

Then the voice became that of his future shadow: _It_ ** _is_** _when you half-suspect you could have what you really want, if you will but let it slip into his ears. You so want to be seen by him again, don’t you? No other would understand this, surely, but he would also reassure you. Reformed Merchant of Death, meet the still-horrible God of Lies currently fooling himself into believing he can still chaaange,_ hissed the voice of his older self, deep in his mind. _As though you hadn’t manipulated him into forgiving you the unforgivable. Would you even tell him of how you stole this body from the innocent child you watched him be so disturbed by, little magpie? Do you foolishly believe that his forgiveness of that, selfish creature as he is too, would ever be enough to soothe your burning?_ The sound of mad, fiery laughter filled Loki’s head despite his attempts to banish it.

Luckily, Tony chose that moment to snap him back into reality.

“Are you seriously _biting your tongue_? Who the fuck even _are_ you?”

The god kept glaring at him, but was breathing faster, and looked genuinely scared for just a second, and like he wasn’t even certain of the answer himself. Then he quickly shook his head and tried to step away again, but was held fast. He didn’t exactly struggle. Nor did he say another word. He didn’t dare. He didn’t deserve what his words might try to steal for him, before he could find the strength of will to stop them, especially now. Better for Stark to be free of him. Better his older self never thought he could get his younger self to be more obedient by threatening the life of Iron Man.

How laughable, that he doubted even Tony would believe that might work.

It would.

“Loki...” That came out sounding all wrong, to the inventor’s own ear. Too low, with too much of a mixture of suspicion, and concern, and something a lot more dangerous, like want, in his tone. _No. No, no, no._ Tony released him immediately and took a sharp step back.

Loki visibly swayed toward him just slightly as he did, then caught himself and wrapped his arms tightly around his own ribcage, eyes snapping shut as he swore at length. “You really shouldn’t tax my restraint so childishly, Stark. Had I harmed you, my brother would never forgive me, and thus would your injury be ruin of the transformation I’m trying so hard to canonize,” he lied quickly. “You will not so easily provoke me to violence as others could my older self. I better know my limits.”

“What the fuck, Loki?”

“Also I have raging adolescent hormones and you are not wearing a shirt, Anthony Stark!” Loki snapped. “Have you no _decency_ , man? Have you _seen_ you?”

“Well, no, clearly. I’m Tony Stark, and my name has never, ever been commonly associated with decency. Also yes, my awareness of my own good looks is one of the key reasons for that lack of association between me and decency. Wait, are you seriously in the Jotunn equivalent of puberty?”

“No, actually, by earth standards my physical development would be closer equivalent, in physiological and mental development, to age eighteen or nineteen for a human, I’d estimate.”

Tony took another sharp step back.

Loki raised an eyebrow, at that.

The inventor cleared his throat. “Hey, I don’t actually need to be molested by alien jailbait today, especially if you’re having some kind of hormonal issues.” He was willing to let that clearly-a-diversion-tactic pass, so long as it helped him stop thinking about Loki maybe wanting him for any other reasons, because if he dwelled too much on that, he might start to want too, and down that road there lay a land of great NO. _Wrong Loki. Bad. Stop._

“I just explained-”

“As far as I’m concerned, you are still jailbait. By which I mean Mjolnir-bait.”

“Well, _that’s_ true,” Loki mused, “or it would be, if you were actually capable of shame, but also incapable of discretion.” He sounded just a little teasing, because he could not help himself, not when it caused the man to look genuinely appalled and a bit flustered in a way he clearly did not wish to be, in present company. It was an appropriate response, given the man clearly, like Thor, still believed this Loki was the dead child, rather than the old monster, under this stolen skin.

The thought sobered him uncomfortably and completely smothered his mirth.

“I live my life in a perpetual spotlight, kid,” Tony responded finally.

“All the better to keep most people distracted from back-stage indiscretions, Tony.  Don’t think that’s not obvious to the likes of me.”

“No... it never wasn’t, really, with you.”

“I’m leaving,” Loki announced crisply. Their conversation, clearly, was just going to get more emotionally damaging by the second, at this rate. “Unless you plan to attempt to trip me on my way out again, in which case I might feel inclined to break one of your kneecaps, first, just temporarily, with a spell to heal it before you can call any of your fellow Avengers, leaving you without evidence against my shiny new character, by the time I’ve finished my escape.”

A hint of a smirk tugged at the corner of Tony’s mouth. He waved a hand in the direction of the elevator. “Yeah, yeah. Go on and get out of here. You’re giving me a headache.” He then watched Loki become invisible again and let himself collapse back onto the couch, immediately picking up his tablet. To his surprise, the trickster headed instead for the balcony (after surreptitiously picking up his previously discarded sword like the disingenuous bastard he always was; although sheer pragmatism could also be to blame, honestly, Tony tried to chide himself) and ran down the side of the building like gravity wasn’t a concern of his.

“Little shit,” the inventor groaned.

_And yet, you miss that._

“Shut up,” he muttered to himself, and went to take a very cold shower. Damn the trickster for being ridiculously even prettier than before, but also still too damn familiar, too damned _Loki_ , for the likes of Tony Stark to resist wanting, despite himself. “Damn him. Damn me. Damn everybody. Fuck this.”

 

~~

 

Loki ran most of the way back to his apartment, until he could flop dejectedly across his couch and give a long, high hiss of frustration and anger, and just maybe a little bit of whining.

Tony Stark had no right to be just as delicious as the trickster remembered. And Loki’s own body had no right to betray him like this in response to it. Ridiculous adolescent flutterings and an ache through his entire ribcage whenever he had tried to pull away from the man’s grasp.

_Embarrassing. Weak._

Never once before today had Tony loomed over him like that without the both of them being horizontal. No wonder it had affected him. Before, the mortal had been easy to overpower, easy to play with, and to take. It had been a source of occasional catharsis for them both: one had a need to debase heroes, and for a long while Tony had wanted and needed to be debased, as it seemed to help him keep his ego in check, particularly with someone like Loki so able and willing to tear down his mind and his mistakes as well as his physical body, without mercy.

Recalling the occasion that the futurist had summoned his elder self and offered him that particular deal, forcing him to sign a contract for it even so that Stark would be as incapable of sharing that meeting as the trickster himself had been, on pain of Iron Man sharing with others how to drag Loki to them via such a summoning, only to then make an offer of another contract... an offer of mutual release.

The inventor had vetted all people that he knew, friends and acquaintances and yes even villains, and out of them all, he had found Loki to be the most ideal for his purposes; Tony had told him that much, and kept his own expression calculative and curious, while he asked if the god of lies might be interested in a torrid sexual affair, so long as he agreed to respect the inventor’s safe-word, and agree to leave the rest of their respective lives as hero and villain unaffected and uninvolved with their occasional indulgences.

It had been an insane offer. A mad and brilliant and irresistible thing.

It had also been the most successful seduction of Loki Laufeyson in all of history.

That was saying quite a lot.

Right now, over a year and a half since then, now occupying as he did a body not originally his own–– _I was never even truly born, merely implanted in the mind of a child by a thieving magic bird whose image I retained for far too long_ ––Loki kept repeating to himself a fervent mantra: _Tony Stark is a weakness and to be avoided. Tony Stark is a weakness and to be avoided. Tony Stark is a weakness and to be avoided._

Below it was an admission that he did not want to make: that he suspected his future self already had plans to dispatch the inventor, somewhere down the line.

And yet...

_When is a truth also a lie?_

Magic, after all, gives one a very different view of what is and is not an absolute (or even remotely objective) truth. It is true that Loki lies. It is true that the older version of himself advising the All-Mother is the monster Loki Laufeyson will one day grow into... in one possible future. Not yet made manifest in this universe.

The older Loki had said that he wished to bring about his version of the future as soon as possible. That, the younger trickster knew, was the same over-confidence which had foiled him far too often before, usually at the hands of the likes of the Avengers, because someone as clever as Tony Stark was more shrewd than most Aesir, whom the older Loki had spent much more time around, their thick-skulled tendencies making him complacent, until they had gained such surprisingly keen new allies of all sorts, from the likes of Midgard.

Allies like Tony: perspicacious as any trickster, and about as devious.

For a moment, Loki was distracted by recollection of the feeling of fingers in his hair and Tony’s voice choking, _j-just that the word d-devious was fucking made for it––oh fuck don’t stop that_ , in answer to the question “Now, what was it that you were saying about my tongue?” one night nearly a year ago. Idly, the trickster wondered if he could still do that particular trick with his new tongue, but in doing so reminded himself yet again of the full implications of his _stolen_ tongue, and thus quickly soured his mood again and caused his arousal to vanish, replaced by self-loathing.

“Ughk.”

He pushed himself upright and banished his coat and armor in favor of a t-shirt and pajama pants. Letting his head loll back until he stared at the ceiling, he considered that his elder self must be from another universe. _But why come here?_

The younger god quickly realized that it was more than likely that the older Loki did not journey from another universe just to deliver _good news_ ; no, for that would suggest he might be doing it for the sake of someone else, which was simply not Loki’s way––not _that_ Loki’s way, in any case. _You will understand, when you are my age._

In his heavily warded New York apartment, the younger of the two Loki’s shuddered despite himself.

Yet... his elder self clearly planned to bring about the same events he knew, into this universe. What of Tony Stark’s part in that? Why had his older self not already begun to threaten and exploit Iron Man for, if he had any recollection of the words that this Loki-copy recalled telling Tony, in that last bittersweet meeting in dreams, before Loki’s con-job of glorious self-sacrifice, during the siege of Asgard?

Loki the Younger picked up his sword, unsheathed it, and carefully placed his thumb over the tip, wincing only a little at the puncture when he slid it into his own skin. The truth-magics felt awful. He could feel them pulling at him, but not the way they had pulled on others like Angela. Not even as it had pulled when he plunged it through his older self’s chest, either. No, this was very gentle, compared to that.

It was enough to see what his older self couldn’t, and here of all places, in the center of his apartment where his wards were strongest and no eyes save his own and... well, Leah’s if she cared to look, could see him, he was safe to voice even potentially dangerous truths, for only his own ears to hear.

 _Actually..._ If there was one thing Loki had learned in his lives, it was the true value of practical paranoia.

He removed his thumb from the blade long enough to reinforce those wards and further envelop himself against... well, himself. And maybe even Leah. Everyone.

Then he tried again, though his hand shook and it stung to pierce the already-healing wound again, but Loki was willing to do far more than that, if he must. He closed his eyes and tried to focus, tried to avoid the worst of the pull and force himself to say the words that he needed to. They were slow, at first, resistant, which made him panic enough to push a bit harder against the pain of the blade.

“The Loki Laufeyson residing in Asgardia’s prison cells now, has never loved nor even lusted for Anthony Stark as I have, nor could he begin to imagine it.” There, he said it. It was _true_ , and for a moment the relief that washed over him was overwhelming. His older self had no idea that-

_Wait._

He flung the blade onto the floor and nearly leapt over the back of his own couch with an unmanly yelp.

_Love of all things? LOVE?!_

“No!” he yelled at the sword. Then he realized he had just yelled at a sword, and let himself tumble backwards to land in an uncoordinated heap on the floor behind his couch. “Shit!”

This was bad. This was very bad. With dawning horror, Loki realized that this was a great part of why he had never been partial to truth. He could deny all sorts of things conveniently for ages, and without something like an inconvenient artifact burningly chock full of truth-magics to pull his vulnerabilities into the light where he was forced to see them and the value of them, he had been able to compound lies upon lies––his own, and those of a few people he had felt genuine affection for, and a desire to _keep_ them––until he insulated himself enough with vitriol to let them burn for him, when their usefulness could no longer prevent him from considering them more of a weakness than a strength.

Old Loki had so hated his weaknesses, all of them, and sought to burn every one of them to nothing. Thor had endured. Asgard had endured, and so even had Odin.

Tony Stark, too, had endured, and recovered from his own traumas in the past year only partially. He had given in to one of his oldest demons, and stubborn pride still lingered in his words, when he spoke of regrettable past actions many of the other Avengers still had not fully forgiven him for...

Loki was grateful that the child had not interacted very much with Stark. He was also grateful that the body he had found himself inhabiting, in the wake of the child’s death, had been a mute experience, sexually: he had possessed no mature carnal inclinations, while in that form.

It had been a bit refreshing and head-clearing, actually. In much the same way that adjusting to the sensation of near-powerlessness, due to the sheer youth of this body, this vessel, had been unexpectedly humbling. It had forced the old trickster to act as cowardly and earnestly (however reluctant at first, that hadn’t lasted) around the likes of the Young Avengers. America Chavez had even reminded him of Leah, and a bit of Stark, and he had felt only confusion when he had let his thoughts drift to the inventor, during that time.

Until Wiccan had finally aged him. Then, thoughts of his which drifted toward Tony Stark tended to be of a sort that required Loki to excuse himself from any social engagements and take some time to himself in his shower. Usually it took... a few tries, to completely calm himself, to such a degree that he could be seen by any of his slowly-growing group of friendly acquaintances.

He still would hardly say that he had friends. Leah would never forgive him, and Verity was still unsure how to reconcile the existence of a genuine trickster god with her regular day-to-day and more mundane reality, and thus too frequently seemed half-convinced that she might be somehow hallucinating his presence, whenever they found time to hang out recreationally; although he’d been right, that she proved to be an excellent neighbor.

Still. Almost-friendly people he could actually ask favors of without worrying about them stabbing him in the back at the first opportunity, in Loki’s life, were terribly infrequent. He appreciated Verity for that. All she required of him was to be frank about when he would usually be lying. She seemed fine with omission, when he made it clear that he would have to lie, in order to give her any real answer; as long as he gave her the option, she would choose knowing acceptance of his omission, rather than an actual lie. Really, it was more relaxing an experience than Loki wanted to admit, feeling so free as that, in conversation with anyone.

That didn’t make him feel better about truth in general, given that he now knew himself, rather undeniably, hung-up on Tony Stark in a sentimental manner. Loki wanted to set himself on fire just for old times’ sake, at the very thought. The likes of Loki Lie-smith? Afflicted with love? How could this _not_ end in tragedy and horror?

And yet... what his elder self didn’t yet know, however dangerous, he could not help but consider to be an advantage worth using. Even if it had to be something as pathetic and ridiculous as an unfortunate degree of infatuation with Anthony Stark. It was something too ridiculous to imagine that his ignorant-of-the-marvels-of-sex-with-Tony-Stark elder self would even consider possible.

That at least offered him the element of surprise.

He still felt doomed, but even so, he factored his own fixation with Stark into his calculations now, and began to plot anew. He could use this. If his heart tried to interfere, then perhaps he could consider the villain route again after all. Jilted lover would be a new angle for him, this time around, for a theme. He could get tips in sounding desperate from Amora.

“That’s it.” Pulling himself up off the floor, Loki shook out his limbs and his head and exhaled a long, unsteady breath. “Clearly, I’m already doing over six insane things. I might as well top it off with a still worse idea yet: sincerity.”

It was one of Tony’s weaknesses, at least.

Loki picked up his blade and started to summon the energies necessary to cast a discreet communication spell, then hesitated. _What do I say? Oh shit, what do I say?!_ Anxiety spiked up through him far too acutely, making him want to flee from the sword, which was ridiculous; he was _still holding it_.

Eventually, the trickster hoped that he would either get used to the mood-swings caused by his more youthful body’s overactive hormonal systems, or he would again grow past them. Neither option could possibly happen soon enough.

Loki wound up leaving the sword on his couch and going to take a very long, hot shower in a vain attempt to forget that most of the past few weeks had even happened, and try to work on his first draft of conversation/confrontation cue cards in his head.

 

~~

 

Three days after the last Loki-sighting, and Tony had almost managed to go three of his waking hours without once thinking about the god of lies.

He considered that an impressive feat, given that he’d only gotten four hours of sleep. The fact he’d woken in a sweat after dreaming about the god’s new youthful self, smaller and yet still far stronger than a normal human, dragging Tony to his knees and demanding he suck Loki’s cock, might have been a factor in the sleep-avoidance.

“I need you to help me kill myself,” the trickster suddenly said, right behind him.

The inventor nearly jumped out of his chair and through the ceiling. Or he would’ve gone through the ceiling, had he been wearing his armor. Notably, he wasn’t. Because Pepper had dragged him into his office at Stark Industries to make him do paperwork. On actual paper. Like the stone age.

“Fuck!”

“No thank you. I’m an astral projection, at present, actually. It’s the only thing I can get through all of your technological anti-magic measures at all, without also making our communications visible to others,” the god mused, as he watched Tony’s office chair whirl around and the inventor stare at him with wide eyes and an enraged scowl, though he struggled not to look directly at the inventor’s face as he did so.

“What the fuck, how the fuck, why the fuck, and also are you high?”

“I’m actually very regrettably sober, dear,” Loki said.

Tony did a visible double-take, at the endearment. The too-familiar endearment that a Loki this young had no right to call him, because it made something painful twist in his chest. “W-what?”

“It’s _me_ , Tony,” the god said, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “You’re quite right. I was far too cowardly to die properly, so I made a copy. I then left it in a form which aimed itself at my new incarnation, implanted in his young skull, and arranged to... force him to sacrifice himself for the good of all, and make room for me.” He made a face. “I wish that I had not.”

“Why is your astral projection holding your sword too tight by the blade and bleeding from the palm, exactly?” the inventor managed to rasp, his head still spinning as he tried to process.

“The blade is infused with powerful truth-based magics.” He waved it a bit with his free hand, wincing. “Painful sincerity, to prove a point. I’m accustomed, you see, to most of my attempts at sincerity to be thrown in my face along with the phrase ‘but you're the god of lies’ and thus summarily dismissed. I wanted to skip that part, for once.”

“You said...”

“Killing myself, yes. Not _this_ self that I’m occupying, obviously, but another of me currently in Asgard. He’s who I would have become without you, I suspect, and without a few other factors as well: factors which make me weaker, but allow me to be different than him, which is all I can now hope to achieve.” He winced. “I _do_ wish this blade came with better means to support careful omission, but it seems to be all or nothing. Damn.”

Tony continued to gape at him.

Loki was notably not looking directly at him, at all. He looked distinctly pained, but also almost as wrathful and determined as he had ever looked, in his old form. “Needless to say: I’ve discovered that he is from a universe wherein you and I were never anything beyond enemies. You never invited me into your life for any reason, and I never came to, ah-” He stopped, words starting to form on his lips, but no sound followed. Eventually he seemed to give up, cleared his throat, and tried a different truth: “Okay, that has far too many other uncomfortable truths connected to it, I can’t say that, apparently.” He rubbed his free hand over his face. “Damn again.”

“I...” Tony held up a hand. “Give me a second here.”

Loki nodded, still not looking at him.

“What _aren’t_ you saying?”

Visibly, the god bit something back so hard it seemed to make his eyes water, and tendons in his neck stand out in sharper relief for a long moment before he managed, with an effort, to swallow whatever it was and shake his head. “Please don’t make me say that yet.”

“Yet?”

“The longer I hold this accursed blade, the harder it gets. Please, Tony, work with me here. I’m trying, for a change, to explain myself sincerely in the vain hope that you might aid me, if I make clear I mean you the opposite of harm!” He clapped his free hand over his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Okay, now I really need to know what else you’re still holding back.”

Loki shot him a glare, but whatever he was holding back caused him to look quickly away again before it could escape his lips despite all efforts to restrain it. He emitted a frustrated noise in his throat.

“This is so fucking surreal, I don’t even know where to start.”

Loki dropped the sword with a clatter and held up his wounded hand in a clear gesture that he have a moment to adjust. “Damn it all, I can’t. That stings like you would not _believe_ , for me. My sincerity up to now must needs suffice.”

“It’s fine, actually. I get the gist. Holy _fuck_ , you really have changed.”

“Have I?” Loki asked, in a very small voice.

“You want to poke me with that thing and ask that again, or what?”

“Astral projection, Stark. I know we’ve been over this.”

Tony’s entire body twitched at the way Loki’s pitch lowered into that familiar, polished condescension. “You’re alive. _You_.”

“Don’t get _too_ excited,” the trickster sighed. “I need you focused, Tony.”

Why was it always easier to focus when it was Loki who required it of him? Oh right. Lots of conditioning on his knees. And in various other positions. _Best not think of that, Tony. Focus. Now._

Tony sat up, arousal cleared away like smoke dissipating. “Okay. How do we kill him, then?”

“That, my dear, is wherein lies our problem,” Loki sighed. “He’s far, far stronger than both of us, and capable of time-travel to an extent. It’s very distressing. Also, he very nearly succeeded in exploiting my insecurities sufficiently that I didn’t detect the few cues that he’s not actually from _this_ universe, originally.” He sounded as annoyed as he used to sound over his own plans being foiled by the Avengers, but there was a new dimension to his venom, here.

“You hate him more than you ever hated Thor, I think.”

“Thor, I can out-think. That is a mere annoyance, compared to someone like myself, and all I am capable of. Surely you remember.”

“Mmm, yes, I do, but don’t distract me now we’ve just gotten started. This is _important_. _This_ is what makes you different from him, and he’s not counting on this part. You give a shit about me; he doesn’t know that. He thinks I have no reason to care about your fate, either. What might you know about what _I’m_ capable of that he doesn’t?” Tony asked.

Loki turned his head slowly and stared at him, wide-eyed. “Oh.”

“You have an idea.”

“I have the urge to occupy your lap, but that’s been the case for most of the duration of this talk, dear, and yes... I have an idea.” His grin was pure mischief and malice. “I knew I could count on your brilliance.”

Most people thought Tony Stark was physically incapable of blushing.

Loki knew better, and smiled fondly to see it again. “How exactly did you summon me, in the beginning? Tell me every single detail you’ve omitted until now.”

“Caught that, did you?”

Loki nodded.

“Trade.”

“Pardon?”

“Why couldn’t you look at me while bleeding on truthy, there?”

It was Loki’s turn to blush.

“Wow, that’s new.”

“Shut it, Stark.”

“But you’re adorable!”

“I...” Loki buried his face in his bloodied hands and mumbled something.

“Pardon?”

“I do not want to say it like this,” Loki snapped, lifting his palms from his mouth enough to speak loud and clear again. “I’m not here. I can’t-” He took a deep breath, and let it out. “Not that you’d be safe with me physically anywhere near you, at this time. I’m already uncertain whether our earlier exchange might have been watched, and he does seem prone to keeping an eye upon me at all times. I can feel it, but just as often, I cannot, and yet I know that even half of _those_ times he is watching and hoping that I believe that he is not! This is _me_ we’re up against, Tony, do not begin to make me-” He cut off and lowered his hands just enough to glare beseechingly at the inventor from under slightly blood-smeared brows. Another heavy drop of blood fell from the trickster’s wounded hand as it sluggishly healed. It didn’t splash on Tony’s floor, which apparently was outside the projection-range of Loki’s illusion.

“Are you...” Tony tried to form the words, but found his mouth and throat suddenly uncooperative, like they couldn’t fathom the commands his brain was trying to make them form anymore than his poor brain could wrap around the absurd idea that just occurred to him. “Loki...”

“Don’t.”

“What am I, to you? Pick up the sword.”

“No.”

Tony glared at him. “Loki.”

The trickster picked up his sword (or the astral projection version of it) with a muttered curse, but only proceeded to wipe it off and re-sheath it before stalking toward Tony, not stopping until he stood very close. “Tony, I value you and your capabilities very highly, but I expect nothing. You are not bound to me now in _any_ fashion. Nor I to you. Our past contract was voided by my death.” He swallowed tightly. “The reason I cannot look upon you while that blade makes contact with the blood in my veins, is one I do plan to share with you. Now is _not_ the time, however. Please.”

“I need to know.”

Loki let his head hang. “I... will go, then.”

“What?” Tony sounded scandalized.

“Thank you for your time.” He started to move back.

“Don’t you dare leave!”

“Tony, please-”

“Keep talking and stay right the fuck where you are, projecting yourself here, because I missed you, you complete dick,” Tony snapped.

Loki’s head snapped up. “Y-you did?”

The inventor looked at him strangely, like the trickster had suddenly become inexplicably dense. “Yes, of course I did! You’re––how do you not––did you think I didn’t fucking care?! After the way I-”

“You have abandonment issues. You could have been responding in a way that you would have later sobered from and decided to blame me for,” Loki said quickly, then trailed off into almost a whisper: “Most do. All but you, in fact, apparently. I...” He reached out, like he wasn’t aware he was doing it, but his hand jerked back as soon as it got too close to the inventor’s face. The inventor who had been so careful not to touch his illusory projection, like he was afraid Loki would disappear if he dared. He would, for a moment, until the illusion restablized. So long as the trickster was able to focus and maintain the connection, which... Well, so long as he wasn’t surprised, he could... touch.

Tony wasn’t proud of the aching and shocked and dismayed noise that escaped him when the illusion of Loki’s fingers trailed over the back of his hand intangibly, and the trickster’s whole image flickered out for just for two full seconds in response, then reappeared. “Fuck you, don’t _do_ that!”

“You... care for me.”

“I can’t say I was in love with you or anything before your big sacrifice move, but in the wake of it, I did a lot of mourning of what might’ve been, if you hadn’t had to be sort of an evil asshole a lot, okay? It sucked,” Tony snapped, “but you were right. You couldn’t get free of all the shit you’d done, just by dying and coming back as yourself again. Ragnarök proved that pretty definitively, but then you went and did all of... you really still think you could go back to the way you were?” he asked.

“Not if you keep looking at me like that,” Loki breathed.

“Holy shit, it really is almost like you’re in love with me,” Tony almost-squeaked.

Loki recoiled as though burned, but in a panicked and flailing manner.

The inventor felt his jaw drop. It then continued to hang open as the god of mischief tried to hide his face behind both hands again, swore a lot, turned away from him and took a few steps away only to abruptly pivot and suddenly sink down to his knees next to the right arm of Tony’s office chair.

“What.”

“Tony-”

“But you-”

“Tony!”

“But I-”

“Tony, please stop. You can’t possibly return the-”

“Not yet, but I’d like a chance to get to know the new you better, dammit.”

Slowly, Loki raised his head enough to tentatively meet the mad mortal’s gaze through the fringe of his ridiculous boy-band hair, where it had fallen across his eyes. The expression on his face was stricken, horrified, fascinated, longing, and disbelieving, all in one. “What?”

Tony shook his head briefly, mostly at himself, then explained, “Look, okay, you were safe, when you were old-you, because you were sort of uncomfortably evil, and we had our mostly-no-strings-but-also-non-interference contract things in place, and that was all I needed form you at the time, during most of that time. And that worked out. We both got off on it, right?”

The trickster nodded, when he realized the pause that followed was room for him to argue if he felt like it, which he didn’t.

“You knew that.”

“I did.”

“I know who you were. I dunno who the fuck you are now. You’re... all the things that made you appealing before, but I don’t want to kill you. I don’t even want to fight you, and I can tell you don’t actually want to fight me now either. Even if I had to, for some reason, it’d force me to question myself. Okay? It’d be uncomfortable. You’re not what or who you were, but you are, but only in all the ways that used to make me want to love you even when I genuinely _hated_ you, before. In fact, that’s been driving me crazy every damned time Thor talks about you, or I see you on security footage, or you show up in my damned tower, ever since you aged up, and the whole time I’ve been telling myself it wasn’t you, that I should keep away, that it was sick to think of––of you before, when you were...”

“But I wasn’t... this time.”

“Yeah, and I want you.”

Loki made a noise in his chest he wasn’t proud of, like a growl and a gasp and a whine got put into a blender, and the resulting slurry had filled up his lungs, only to escape them in a mangled new form.

“Wow, that was hot. Can you make that noise again?”

“You thought I was... what was it, Mjolnir-bait?” his grin was in equal measure hesitant and sly.

“Uh...”

“I want to be worthy of you. I... will reluctantly admit that your influence might be one of the more important factors, when it comes down to what makes me different from him,” Loki whispered. “It’s the only thing I know for certain that I might catch him off-guard with. In all other respects, he knows me, save for this one. _Thankfully_.” He frowned, pointedly worried. “You’d have been dead weeks ago.”

The inventor stopped breathing for a few seconds. For multiple reasons.

“Tony?” Loki shot him an uncertain glance.

“Okay. Let’s kill you.”

Slowly, the trickster’s manic grin returned in full force and ferocity, but there was something new to it this time. It was too pragmatic to be hope, but there was a glitter of promise that what he could not hope for, he could at least make plans to steal or otherwise claim for his own.

It made Tony’s entire body heat.

This was such a bad idea.

“Good,” Loki murmured. “Let us plan, then.”

 

~~

 

Three months later, and Tony Stark was just really, really glad he would be able to annihilate the biggest cockblock in the history of all the realms of Yggdrasil: an older creeper version of Loki whose very existence prevented even most magic-based means of meeting with Loki over the past months from being implementable, due to his lover’s alternative-future-self’s capacity for seeing even what things Heimdall never could have. There really was only so much he could tease Loki’s astral projection without embarrassingly cutting off transmission when he accidentally touched the illusion and caused the thin and fragile connection to snap closed, because he kept catching them both off guard. Mostly the inventor was just annoyed that he wasn’t even doing it _on purpose_.

Well, maybe once.

The fact that Tony hadn’t been able to stop himself subconsciously getting that close, and reaching just a little too far... didn’t bother him as much as he was certain it should.

The fact that he’d felt scorching electric pain through his entire body––almost exactly like being zapped by a taser––the first time he’d been under enough strain to give in to the urge to reach for a drink, and every other time after, ever since Loki had revealed his true self, had caused a few rows between himself and the trickster, during that first month. Sharp and poisonous words, at first, then eventually cold and shattered ones, over time.

Getting past that, and drying the inventor back out afterward, had taken up the second month, and the third had been spent completing the steps of the plans they had successfully woven into place around their enemy despite their interpersonal drama, because the one thing they could seem to agree on, no matter what, hinged on destroying the single greatest obstacle standing between them both, and what they most wanted to be doing: screwing each other’s brains out amidst all of their perverse, and yet intensely emotional, forms of psychological warfare.

Thus, clearly, the advisory agent to the All-Mother triumvirate rulers of Asgardia had to die, and stay dead.

Not that setting that particular trap had been _easy_.

 

~~

 

“You foolish child,” Loki the Elder snarled, magic crackling around the ensnared younger version of himself native to this universe, sharp claws of agony from the burning green magic making the younger Loki scream. “You think that you can defy me? I know you, better even than you know yourself, little bird.”

“I c-call _bullshit_. You failed in your own ‘verse, and you want to mold this one to suit you instead,” the magic-bound trickster snarled, where he was held by shackles of glowing green spell-work to the thick stone wall behind him, and then took on an amused, mocking tone as he purred, “but you were _too hasty_.” His grin was forced and mirthless. “You missed a few key differences between you and I.”

“It must not be anything of very great importance, or you would not be here.” He held up a familiar rune-marked jar of bluish-clear glass, filled anew now with something black and vitriolic. “How many of us may erase the mind in this body and replace it with another, crueler version of ourselves before it breaks, I do wonder? Let us hope this is the last. Whatever differences you so cherish will simply cease to apply, when you are as much myself as I was, at your age.”

The younger Loki giggled, then, high and hysterical and malevolent. He almost doubled over with it, but his restraints only let him curl in on himself so far before another shock of pain wracked through him in punishment for it. “You fool, you fool, you mad arrogant fool!”

“Laugh however much you may like,” said the elder, opening the jar.

The younger trickster giggled again as the amorphous, cloudy force billowed out of the jar and toward him. Then he sighed, with one last amused snort, when it hovered just a few inches from his face. “Predictable. You really shouldn’t use upon me the same tricks I’ve used on others. You should know us far better than that.”

“Why not?”

Just before the cloudy psychic parasite could touch him, the ex-Agent of Asgard roared, “ENGAGE NULLIFIER!” The clever little device on a small pendant around his neck detected the command, and projected a protective field of sorts, tingling and aching through his nerves and his bones like electricity as the rest of the room was blasted with the magical equivalent of an EMP. It had taken himself and Tony only three months to conceive and construct such a device. While he would never admit to being horrified by the very idea of a machine that could entirely shutdown all magical energies within a 100-ft radius of the bullseye pendant he wore around his neck for all of Stark’s machines to aim it at, nor would Loki the Younger admit that felt as though he were making a grave mistake by merely allowing it to exist; instead, he had resisted the impulse to try and unmake this ‘magician’s kryptonite’ as Tony had called it, the moment he understood how, and how _effectively_ , it truly worked.

It was necessary.

He also reminded himself to trust Tony Stark, in this, but no other, and to destroy all evidence that existed outside of his own and Tony’s brains as soon as he possibly could. _That has to be enough_ , the younger trickster thought, through the pain of the charge of energy that kept him from being stripped of his magics despite being in the eye of the Stark weapons’s storm. Consciousness left him only for a few seconds before snapping abruptly back into full awareness.

He could hear Loki the Elder screaming, and watched as the black cloud of mystic and psychic energies from the jar was vaporized like an ant under the burning glare of a perfectly-positioned sunbeam channeled through a magnifying glass. Then, weakened as he was with all magics disbanded, the older trickster’s scream was cut off abruptly by a long sword-blade piercing his chest with inhuman force, wielded by an armor-bedecked Tony Stark. The sword dragged upward just as the younger Loki hit the floor, magic manacles releasing him as they experienced a sudden total-existence-failure.

The last thing the older Loki saw, before death took him, was the younger version of himself yanking a pendant off his neck and summoning another jar, this one black with red runes upon it, and snarling an enchantment to activate the spells embedded in its glass, then shoving it straight through the elder trickster’s forehead and into his brain.

Still more screaming followed as the old Loki seemed to be sucked into the container like matter into a black hole or smoke into a vacuum. Bones and tissues seemed to melt and then become vapor, whirling into the container all at once, until there was nothing left, and the younger trickster slammed a lid down onto it with one hand while catching and supporting the jar itself with the other.

“This time, I believe I’ll entrust the container to Hela,” Loki rasped. “She will either send the shredded remains of his soul back to the appropriate universe, or find some entertaining means of destroying every iota of what is left of him.”

Tony lowered the bloodied blade in his hand and let his faceplate slide up. “You okay?”

“Me?” the trickster mocked. “Oh, wonderful. Quite, quite...” He swayed as he spoke, further and further each time he tried to catch himself and remain upright, until finally his legs gave out when he yanked a dagger out from between two of his ribs. “Fuck. Poisoned. That complete bast-” then he hit the ground.

 

~~

 

Loki awoke in chains.

He wished that it weren’t such a familiar sensation.

He might have emitted a small, annoyed, and pained little groan.

“Oh good. I’d hoped they weren’t bullshitting about that antidote.”

Head snapping up, Loki found that he was not alone in the small cell. Chained up in a position identical to the trickster’s own, on the opposite wall, was Tony Stark, dressed in the bodysuit that he typically wore under his armor. “What?”

“Poison. You were dying. Oh, don’t worry about the jar. You almost-dying was enough to get Hela’s attention, and I managed to pass it to her shortly before all of Asgard descended on us screaming about treason against the All-Mother.”

“Ah. I did wonder if they might be angry.”

“They’re livid.”

Loki let his still-painfully-throbbing head loll forward with a small noise of discomfort and annoyance. “They did not know the full extent of his plans. They trusted his word. They deserved to have their own plans shattered for that foolishness alone.”

“They’ll have to let me go, though. Diplomatic immunity. I think I heard Pepper shouting orders a few minutes ago, just down the hall.” He hesitated. “What about you?”

A small shrug, more tense than careless, was the only response. “I will give them all that they deserve from me,” he muttered, low and dangerous.

“Loki...”

“They may try to condemn me for killing him, to save my own skin, by suggesting that his life was more valuable than my own, for their purposes, but that leads to other questions.” He tilted his head up enough to peer through his hair up at Tony. “Such as whether the same might be said of a hero of Earth such as yourself, to whom Asgardia owes numerous debts, for all you have done to aid her over time, or even any other Asgardian in all the realms who might have dared try to smite the old, irredeemable Agent of Asgard, and had cleverness and power enough to succeed; for what if Sif had been his murderer? She would have had every right, after all, and he would have well deserved her wrath. Would she too have been criminalized, had she stood in my place?” His grin widened. “I will make a fool of them, should they attempt to hold a criminal trial, public or private.”

“A ‘private’ trial is the sort of thing that usually makes people disappear.”

“Well, yes.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“What?” Loki sounded sincerely confused.

“Disappear: don’t do it.” He frowned a bit more for emphasis. “ _Again._ ”

A long silence followed, both of them staring at each other: the trickster with eyes wide and bemused and his whole body boneless with pained exhaustion, Tony with fierce determination and just a bit of a plea in his eyes.

“I do not want to disappear,” Loki said softly. “They will find it difficult, at best, to force me to do so, if they find the daring necessary to attempt it.”

“Then promise me you’ll come back.”

“I...”

“If possible. Or impossible, knowing you.”

Loki was torn between the urge to smile fondly at that in an a manner that he knew would have looked a bit ridiculously sentimental, and outright disbelief. The result was a confused furrowing of his brow and his mouth falling open, then snapping shut again, after no words came out.

“Loki.”

“I do not know if I can make that promise.”

Tony’s face fell. “Then they don’t get to take you anywhere either.”

“What?”

A loud series of knocks on the door to the small cell was all the warning they got before they were almost blinded by light from the hallway, as their cell door swung open. Visible in the doorway stood Pepper Potts, looking like a conqueror on the warpath, flanked by Sif and Valkyrie, looking like they appreciated her warpath, if only as professional artisans of a similar nature. 

“I’ve had fantasies that started out like this,” Tony sighed, a little wistfully, “but you can’t take me out yet, Pep.”

“Yes I can,” she responded. Then, after taking one long look at the inventor’s stubborn expression, she had the foresight to dismiss her bodyguards, who retreated to stand at attention at either end of the hall, luckily out of hearing range.

“No really, you can’t,” Tony insisted, but with a bit more softness in his tone. “I refuse to leave this cell until the All-Mother agrees to respect the Avengers’ claim of Loki as my ally in this particular debacle. I only did all this in the first place so I could try and keep him, so don’t unlock any shackles until we have assurance they won’t lock him away like they did his older self, or execute him, or dole out viking-style punishments that could be classified as torture in any nation on Earth.”

Now Loki was gaping, eyes wide in shock.

Pepper looked between the two of them. “I thought you said it was too creepy hooking up with his jailbait reincarnation?”

“It was,” the inventor concurred.

She slowly arched one eyebrow higher.

“I killed him and took over his body, after leaving him no choice but to sacrifice his own mind, or let Mephisto successfully unify all the hosts of his Hell and begin conquering other worlds one by one with the power of fear that even the Serpent would have envied,” Loki explained succinctly. “It was, honestly, rather a horrible thing for me to do, but by the time I reached the conclusion that I would regret the whole thing far more than I could ever rejoice in it, all of the pieces and machinations were already in place, and it was far too late to stop it.”

Pepper looked a bit sickened, but not actually too surprised. “So this is the old you, then. The creepy genocidal fucker.”

“I am a copy of the original, but I am not what he was any longer. Well... it’s a work in progress. While he did not survive, the newer incarnation of myself, whom I killed, left traces behind, physical and deeper than physical, and I will follow this story he has helped me to re-write, as I believe he would have, given the chance... and my advice, of course,” the trickster confessed.

“Yes,” the redhead murmured. “Even so, you murdered a child, when you did that. _Yourself_ as a child. That requires a degree of cold ruthlessness most people are incapable of ever trusting.”

“I was also trapped in his mind in the body of a magpie, and had no power of my own save feeding the fears deep within the boy’s heart, that he might become what I once was,” Loki sighed, a bit impatiently. “That was enough to gain me freedom at a terrible cost, but one I will repay in time, and pain, to keep alive a story not like the ones I have already lived through before, but something free of the expectations of every single citizen of Asgardia save for Thor, and possibly his newly-returned sister.”

Pepper whistled. “Wow. I suddenly see why you two get along.”

Tony coughed. “Well, yeah.”

She nodded curtly, and called down the hall for both of her previous escorts. Once they stood in the doorway behind her, Pepper explained calmly, “Sif, Valkyrie, it’s just been made clear to me, by Mr. Stark, that this is not the Loki you and I once knew, by the fact that instead of allying with his old self and taking over one or more realms as the pair of them saw fit (only to be back-stabbed and replaced by his older self in the end, most likely) that he chose to destroy a potentially powerful ally and prevent him from shaping the politics of all of Asgardia to his evil whims for some eventual end-game I find it stunningly naive that the All-Mother ever believed would be for the benefit of anyone _aside_ from Loki.”

Turning to face them, she smiled unkindly. “This is now a matter of diplomatic negotiations. Midgard would like to claim Loki for our own, based on the grounds that when he committed this allegedly treasonous act, he was allied with one of the Avengers. As such Earth will defend him as they would Tony, in this instance, and furthermore: the labeling of Loki’s actions while allied with Mr. Stark as ‘treason against Asgardia’ the All-Mother would be simultaneously accusing one of Earth’s mightiest heroes of committing an act of war against this realm. And that would be a _problem_.”

“ _What?!_ ” Loki almost squawked.

“Oh, I gave her a run-down of our relationship before. After you ‘died’ and all. About the time that Serpent thing was causing all that fear-based madness around the realms,” Tony explained, with a vague hand-wave. “On a related note: Pepper I love you platonically a whole damn lot and you’re perfect.”

The trickster’s mouth was still hanging open.

“W-what?” Valkyrie sounded at a loss.

“Back to the All-Mother. We have new terms to discuss,” Pepper said, grabbing both Aesir by their shoulders and urging them to turn around and lead her away again, the cell door swinging shut again behind them.

“What... what?” Loki rasped into the sudden dark, watching the mortal across from him blink and squint, struggling as his vision readjusted to the abrupt decrease in lighting. “ _What just occurred here?_ ”

“You heard the girl. I’m keeping you. So is Earth. Fuck ‘em if they value destiny around here more than chaos, but I think you’ve noticed that Earthlings tend to regularly give Fate the finger. It’s what we do.” He shrugged. “You want out of the destiny racket, and not only do I think you can manage it, but I think that everyone in this realm can probably agree to enacting a new law through all the realms along the lines of, ‘no governing political bodies should ever accept future-history advice from any and all alternate-universe versions of Loki Laufeyson, and are forbidden from using such advice to selectively determine or enforce political policy.’ Pepper came up with it, and presented in those terms, I think the rest of the Aesir around here might decide it’s more urgent to address the hideously bad idea it was for the All-Mother to give him such sway over Asgardia’s present and future, more than it’s important to worry about punishing you for getting rid of a poisonous advisor.”

“You... are a madman.”

“You love it.”

“More than I can express in mere words, yes.”

Tony tried to ignore the sensation of his face heating just a little in response to such words, and to his sudden decision to do something stupid. “Love you too.” Like return the sentiment verbally.

“Y-you do?”

“I’d love a chance to show you even more, but it would require both of us to be... not here. And not manacled to opposite walls.”

“Yes, I may never forgive you for confessing to that while I’m unable to so much as touch you,” Loki drawled.

“Oh fuck off.”

“As much as I’m sure you’d enjoy the sight of me working myself up and trying to rut against naught but my own clothes and air over here, I rather think I shall pass. I am quite certain it would take me far longer to achieve orgasm in that manner than it will take Miss Potts to rouse such a furor amongst the members of Asgardia’s court that we shall soon be dragged out before all of Asgard, to explain ourselves.”

Tony’s brain almost short-circuited at the mental image presented, and barely managed to decipher the meaning of the rest of the words that followed. “Hnngh.”

Loki’s grin was pure, openly lascivious mischief, in response.

“You're probably not wrong,” the inventor managed, after a few moments, “but also you’re a cruelly frustrating little fucker, do you know that?”

“I’d love an opportunity to show you how well I still know a lot of things about that, at our first possible opportunity, Tony.”

The door of their cell crashed open abruptly then, flung inward by an enraged Thor, which at least helped the inventor’s increasingly-uncomfortable arousal finally dissipate, in favor of acute terror over being caught salaciously propositioning the thunder god’s little brother. It was an uncomfortable but necessary wake-up call for his common sense and survival instincts alike, and they all ganged up to smother his libido for the sake of all.

“Hey, Thor, how’s tricks?” Tony asked cheerfully, hoping a positive response would baffle his audience into hesitation.

“What are your intentions toward my brother, Anthony Stark?” Thor growled. “He is of Asgardia, and scarcely loyal even to us. What has possessed you to believe that the Earth holds any claim upon him?”

“Because he’s mine,” the inventor said, like it was perfectly natural. “Right, dear?”

Loki nodded solemnly. “Yes, I’d say so.”

Thunder outside struck with enough force to make some of the stone structure around them tremble.

“ _What?!_ ”

“I remember everything, Thor,” Loki said. “All of my past self’s memories reside in this head, along with newer memories. My own. I am not what I was, but I am not brand new, and I am far from innocent, brother. I know of what I speak.”

Thor hesitated, his expression suddenly darker still, like he was seeing an older version of his brother suddenly behind the younger face. “For how long have you remembered?”

“Since a short time before my body’s most recent leap forward insofar as age and physical development,” the trickster explained. “I am the same now as the brother who has fought by your side in the intervening months, Thor, however it may have sometimes required stabbing you in the process, but I aim not to trick you with purely ill-intent, as I once did, for you deserve it less than myriad others.” He sighed heavily, and admitted, while he was at it, “I have my reasons, for all that I do, but I cannot despise you, now, brother. I have tried, but I cannot.”

Something confused and reluctantly sympathetic cracked through Thor’s expression. “You are still not he?”

“I am myself,” Loki said, his voice unsteady. “That is all I know.”

Thor read his face for a few long, cautious moments. “Do you wish to belong to the Earth, more than to Asgardia?”

“Until perhaps Asgardia and her people value being free of foreknowledge of the future, in favor of creating the unexpected and growing with it, I do not wish to be thought of as Asgardian first, and Loki second. Also, I find their food and culture generally more welcoming to a creature such as myself. Many humans are natural tricksters themselves, after all.” He shot Tony a heated look, then.

This time Thor’s glare was protectively threatening, and it was aimed at Iron Man, who smiled as charmingly as he could in response, despite feeling as though a hammer might obliterate his face at any second. “To be fair, I was originally having an affair with the older version and didn’t have any interest in the new one until, uh, recently.” He cleared his throat. “We worked on the coup that took down the other creepier Loki over the past few months. He won’t be coming back again.”

The Thunderer looked back and fort between them several times, lingering on each face for a few seconds before switching. “You are both the most insane and untrustworthy creatures to have ever lived amongst the branches of Yggdrasil. I almost believe you might deserve one another.”

“That is not for you to decide,” boomed another voice from down the hall: Odin’s.

Loki made a face. “Alright. Clearly, I’ve humored you all enough.” He let slip a wily incantation strong enough to send cracking tremors up through the walls of his cell.

Then, quite abruptly, both the trickster and Tony vanished.

Chaos, of course, ensued.

 

~~

 

“Wait, you could do that the whole time?” were the first words out of Tony’s mouth, but he was also in the process of reaching out to grab the lapels of Loki’s coat and start dragging him forward by them.

“I needed time to heal my concussion and the remaining fever from that poisoning first, in order to-” The god of lies felt Tony’s mouth smother his own and stopped trying to form words, even in his own head. They suddenly seemed far, far less important than the slick slide of their tongues against each other as the kiss deepened all at once, and they seized hold of each other tightly, clinging and scratching and claiming.

Tony wasn’t thinking. He couldn’t think anymore. He had no time to think, beyond the logistics involved in shoving Loki up against the nearest wall bodily and arching against him, pressed close as they could get, making a ragged moan claw its way up through his chest.

Loki rocked his hips sharply in response and gasped a little when the inventor’s hand worked its way under the front of his pants to wrap around his cock. “Tony,” he pleaded. “P-patience.”

“Nope. This is my penthouse, right?”

“Yes it i––Tony, _oh_ _yes_!”

“You’re more _sensitive_ , now. Is that just recent deprivation, or have you really still not taken this particular sort of test-drive in your new body yet?”

Loki had trouble focusing. “I-I haven’t had the t-time.”

“Clothes. Off.”

“So eager for me, and so impatient,” the god purred, pitching his voice lower, making the inventor still obediently and wait. Then Loki snapped his fingers to free them of their clothes, grabbing the inventor’s shoulders for support, and pulled himself slowly up Tony’s body further, dragging along the way until he could wrap both legs around the mad inventor’s hips. Before, they’d had an agreement Loki hadn’t been inclined to step beyond the bounds of: the god would humble this irrepressibly defiant mortal, for short periods of time, in various creative ways pleasing to them both, needed by them both. Now, Loki needed something a little more. “Fuck me.”

The inventor shuddered against him, pupils blown wide. “F-fuck really?”

“I want you to open me up with your clever fingers slicked for me, until I almost come from your hand alone inside of me, and then I want you to fill me with your cock, and I want to see it break you even as you take me,” Loki hissed, sharp and demanding, now. “Now carry me to your bed and _fuck me_.”

Tony was shocked at elated at first, as well as aroused beyond words, grinning wolfish and heated as he moaned, “Sir, yes, sir,” and hauled the trickster off the wall. “Damn, you’re heavier than you look-” he choked almost immediately.

“Oh, right.” Loki cast another minor spell. “Carry on.”

The god felt significantly lighter, then, like a human of the same size might have. Tony flailed a moment before he could right his balance at the sudden shift in his center of gravity. “You do that often?”

“Oh, yes. Otherwise, on past occasions I fucked you, Tony, I might have accidentally shattered your pelvis,” the god drawled matter-of-factly, only to cut off with a grunt when Tony threw them both down on the bed and reached for the lube in his nightstand at the same time he leaned down to bite hard at the column of Loki’s throat, dragging an appreciative moan up from him.

“I appreciate it, then.” the inventor murmured. “And this.” He rolled his hips down hard against Loki’s, the movement slow and undulating, until Loki made a long, high noise that hissed through clenched jaw and grit teeth that failed to bite it back. “Ohh, I appreciate _this_ ; you, Loki, are _gorgeous_.”

“ _Tony_ , don’t stop that, _please_ , just-”

“Could you come like this? Just from getting dry-humped on my bed? You really _are_ practically teenager physically, aren’t you?” Only deep-seated survival instincts deep within primitive parts of his brain prevented him giggling a little at the violent pink flush that appeared over Loki’s pale nose and cheekbones, creeping up to his ears and slowly down along the back of his neck. “And you want me to fuck you.” He sounded thrilled and hungry and disbelieving and just a little cracked with awe.

“I promise to return the favor later, yes, but not until we test out how well you fare against the recuperative capacity of an adolescent Jotunn,” Loki purred in turn, even as his own words seemed to deepen the hue of his blushing. “See how many times you can make me come, before you are too wrung out to remember your own name.”

Tony tensed at the flicker of green light visible only out of the corner of his eye and a sharp, almost-painful pressure that he suddenly felt––”Ohhh, fuck!” Tony cried, as the tight cock-ring fully materialized around the base of his cock. “W-was wondering about the catch, unholy god, my god, you _twisted lunatic_ , I love you,” he moaned and slid down the trickster’s body in one smooth motion to wrap his mouth around the head of Loki’s cock.

Crying out at the sudden wet heat and the acute suction, and the clever lapping spirals of that tongue, Loki bucked up hard, without restraint, and barely held himself together when, after only a slight half-choke of the inventor readjusting to the idea, Tony swallowed him down to the base and kept swallowing. The mortal always had such an enthusiastic mouth for this, so desperate to rob himself of breath, and over-sensitized and eager and youthfully uncoordinated as Loki’s new limbs still felt to him, the god couldn’t possibly have lasted long under such a sweet, enthusiastic assault.

And he didn’t, orgasm hitting him hard, and making him half-scream, his hands tangled in the mortal’s hair and trying to weakly draw him off, as the continued, albeit softer suction of Tony’s mouth was beginning to make his every nerve tremble on a serrated knife-edge between pleasure and agony, leaning increasingly more toward agony.

Then the inventor slipped a slick finger into him, all at once, and again the throat around the head of Loki’s cock swallowed hard, and Tony once more began to suck on him: like he considered every inch worth worshipping. The trickster moaned long and high, at that, struggling vainly to get away, but the painful pleasure was wracking his whole body with small sobs and he couldn’t find his strength anymore, tears spilling from his eyes as he grew hard again and a second finger pushed into him. At that, Tony gave a smugly appreciative moan that Loki felt reverberate up through his very bones, setting him on fire––a so much more benevolent and cathartic burning than the fires he recalled from before his rebirth.

By the time Tony was working three fingers in him with genuine fervor, the god was saying his name over and over like a prayer, like a mantra, like it was the only word he wanted on his lips while he was so open and so wrecked as Tony was making him feel, because it truly was. He was painfully close to coming again when the inventor’s mouth suddenly pulled off of him, making him whine high and needy, and struggle to find the strength to writhe closer and get more friction there again, but found none, and shivered in the cool air as Tony again loomed over him.

“I see why you like this so much, damn. Do I look half as gorgeous as you do right now, when you do this to me?” Tony murmured, his mouth so close to Loki’s face that he could feel the mortal’s breath tickle against his lips.

“M-more s-so,” Loki managed to whimper, gritting his teeth when the inventor’s fingers stilled, then began to slowly pull back out of him. To distract himself from writhing, he forced himself to hiss out, “You look perfect when you break for me, Tony, like the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, and like you’re _mine_.”

The tremor that went through Tony’s body where it still pressed so close to Loki’s own made the effort quite worth it. “Loki...”

“Please don’t stop, Tony, please, I need you, my love. Make me come again.”

With a moan, the inventor kissed him hard, and guided his cock into Loki’s hole in one long, hasty shove, feeling Loki tense and give a muffled cry at the sharp, sudden pain of being stretched open wide. Apparent physical age and height differences aside, the god’s cock had slightly greater girth and an inch more length than his partner’s, but the rest of him felt smaller, suddenly, with Tony’s length pushed into him so very deep, and spreading him open wide around it.

It had been a very, very long time since any man had taken him so, in any form, and Loki struggled to relax into the ache of the burning stretch, as he knew that he must.

All the while, Tony kept kissing him, and kissing him, and by the Norns, this mortal could kiss exquisitely well: all heat and longing, possessiveness and playful teasing that seemed aimed to drink down Loki’s entire soul by tempting it to leave his poor excuse of a life in favor of forever lingering here, lingering with Tony pulling back only to shove back in without mercy and send all remaining coherent though careening out of Loki’s head and into the ether for a while.

“Legs up,” Tony groaned. “Hook over my shoulders.”

Loki obeyed without comment, for words quite beyond his capabilities, just then; although he gave a startled keen when the inventor yanked him closer and further down the bed, a bit, until he had the trickster folded into the perfect position to drive his cock in significantly deeper. So he did, and the mellifluously stuttering shout that rasped up from deep in Loki’s chest made him do it again, faster, soon developing a punishing rhythm, slamming home so hard the bed under them made noises which made Tony question whether his furniture could outlast himself and Loki and a cock-ring. The jury, he decided, was out, until he could get the god of lies to come apart at the seams screaming again.

To that end, Tony wrapped a hand around Loki’s cock and snarled, “Come, Loki,” into his ear before biting at the lobe sharply.

Loki whimpered low and came silently, that time, teeth buried in Tony’s shoulder as his climax tore up through him violently this time, and didn’t let him go, because the mad inventor just kept fucking him so hard, and so perfectly deep and bruising. When Tony squeezed his spent cock again, Loki was almost instantaneously hard as a rock again, even as his eyes rolled back in his head and his whole body still trembled with hyper-sensitivity.

“Tony, d-don’t st-top, ahhh, oh please don’t stop.”

“Not done with you,” the inventor moaned. “Never done with you, no never.”

He came again when Tony bit his neck hard enough to wound a human, and this time couldn’t seem to come back down, aftershocks becoming orgasms of their own, never fading long enough for him to count how many of them rolled through him as he cried and begged and screamed for more and harder, until Tony was panting pleas of his own: pleas for mercy, as he began to struggle to keep up a fast pace, too sensitive, his breaths coming in sharp gasps now.

“Please, my god, let me come, I need it, oh fuck, I need it, you’re so tight, I can’t take––” He gripped the sheets so hard they tore now, forcing himself to keep thrusting even as it clearly pained him, sensitive as he was. _Close_ as he was.

It was those pleas which gave Loki anchor enough to draw himself back down from cloud nine and find enough of his voice to weakly command, “Pause for me, pet.”

Tony, now at the edges of his own endurance too, whimpered, and visibly struggled not to thrust right back into his lover’s body again, and ease his unbearable arousal a little.

“Lay back for me.”

Only struggling a little to find the self-discipline necessary to force himself to fully pull out of Loki’s ass, Tony flopped back obediently, hands out at his sides, leaving room enough between his arms and his waist for Loki to straddle his hips with perfect ease, which was precisely what the young god chose to do, lowering himself back down onto his lover’s cock and moaning wantonly now with the renewed ache and now less-overwhelming fullness, watching Tony’s awed face all the while.

“Grab hold of the headboard, Tony dear,” Loki rasped.

Without hesitation, the inventor obeyed, grabbing solid oak and clinging for dear life a Loki sank down the rest of the way, impaling himself fully until he was grinding down so hard that any mortal would have bruised themselves on Tony’s hipbones, attempting the same.

Both of them were shuddering, over-sensitive wrecks, so of course what they both needed was to come quickly, and wrap around one another to recover.

So of course, the agonizingly slow grinding Loki then employed clearly qualified as outright torture. Tony was convinced, now reduced to desperation and utter incoherency himself by it as he was.

“L-loki, please, please, let me, please-”

“Oh, but my love, how you feel like this,” Loki moaned, leaning down to bite sharply at the muscle of his lover’s shoulder. “I could use you like this for _hours_.” He sucked hard, bit harder, making Tony go bonelessly pliant for a moment before renewed tension and frustration tightened some of his muscles in weak spasms, never enough to push him over the edge. “Maybe _days_.”

Tony’s hips arched up high, at the words, imagining himself restrained to the bed, Loki riding him for over two days straight, sunrise to sunset, with a god of lies using him as a ride-able sex toy all the while. His eyes rolled back in his head and he moaned his way through a dry orgasm that left him feeling still frustrated and hard and still more sensitive. “F-fuck, Loki, I c-can’t-”

“Oh, but you held back the rest for me, did you not, love?”

“Yes, my god.”

The trickster preened a little at the old endearment: the title he had insisted Tony employ with him under their contract. Oh, now, it set a whole other sort of hot flush through his entire body. “Yes, Tony, I am your god, and you are solely mine as I am yours.” Reaching down to stroke himself until he was on the verge of coming just once more, Loki moaned into another deeply entangled kiss and enjoyed it for a few long moments as he slowed his hand to give himself a few more crucial seconds before he came again. Hoarsely, he snarled, “Come for me,” as soon as his magic banished the ring from its place around the base of Tony’s cock.

Tony’s whole body convulsed with the force of his orgasm crashing over him like a building collapse. He lost time slightly, in the white-out that pleasure sent his brain careening through as his whole body felt like it shook apart, until he heard the sweetest low, hungry little sounds against his lips as Loki came too, at the feel of him, still grinding down until both of them were whimpering as much with discomfort as pleasure, and then finally slowed his movements to a halt.

By the time the inventor had enough presence of mind to force his eyes open, Loki seemed to be draped over him, limp and exhausted, his brow pressed against the gap between Tony’s collarbones. Feeling his lover soften enough to naturally slip out of his body, the trickster whimpered a little, and tried to nuzzle closer, even as he mumbled a slightly haphazard spell to cleanse their skin and the bedding of the sticky combination of come and sweat they had managed to get everywhere.

Reaching up to stroke the young god’s hair absently with his left hand, Tony let the other slide down Loki’s spine, then up to grip the trickster’s left hip and hold him this close, this comfortable. It really had been far, far too long since he’d had this. Since either of them had.

“Staying?”

“Mmm. Yes.”

Tony grinned a little, despite himself. The older trickster he remembered from before, he never would have thought to ask. He would’ve been a fool to trust the god with such an invitation, but now he only felt pleased and peaceful, and relieved beyond words that Loki wasn’t as lost as he had assumed; instead, the trickster was transformed, just as Loki himself had wanted, and needed, to be.

“Unless you-”

“Stay. I want you to, now. I-” It took an effort to find the words, for a number of daunting reasons. “I trust you.”

Loki’s hands visibly gripped the sheets on either side of them, his whole body tensing, and a little shiver rolling down his spine. “Don’t do that. Never that.”

“You’re a possessive bastard. You take care of what you know is yours. Why shouldn’t I trust that?”

“Because everything I touch burns, in the end.”

Tony tugged up the trickster’s chin, forcing Loki to look him in the eye. “I like the way you burn me, when you burn _with_ me. I think it’s a better fire than the sort you had before, though I can’t say I didn’t perversely enjoy the more destructive versions at the time.”

Eyes wide as saucers, the god could only stare at him in stunned silence for a few long seconds before he croaked, “You’re insane.”

“So are you. See? Matched set.”

“I might still beco-”

“Not while I’m around.”

Suddenly, the god’s eyes shone brighter still. “Yes. Right...”

“You’re scheming.”

“I’m planning.”

“You’re scheming.”

“For you.”

“About me?”

“No. For you. It would be an offer, not a command.” He glanced down and away.

“Loki?”

“I...”

“Sleep.”

The trickster stared down at the mortal under him with more readable in his expression than he had allowed anyone else to see in a very long time. A furtive smile tugged at one corner of his mouth before he tucked his face under the inventor’s chin and tangled their limbs together until they could both settle into one another’s presence comfortably.

 

~~

 

Predictably, all hell broke loose with the rest of the Avengers that morning.

It might not have helped that Clint was the one who initially found them on the couch, Tony straddling the trickster’s lap as Loki hissed something suggestive into the inventor’s ear. His cry of traumatization and dismay had summoned Natasha and Steve almost immediately.

There had been a lot of uncomfortable staring. It probably didn’t help that Loki’s iron grip on the inventor’s hips prevented Tony from escaping his lap. Not that he tried very hard, after his initial jerk backward had pulled a barely-audibly yet heart-rending noise from the god’s throat, anyway.

“Did Thor not debrief anyone?” Tony asked lightly.

“What the actual _fuck_ , Stark?!” the archer cried, still scandalized.

“Well-” Loki began, sounding thoughtful.

“Please don’t answer that. Either of you,” Steve cut in.

“How long?” Natasha asked, and the others looked at her as they usually did when she asked one of the only real pertinent questions, in situations like this: appreciative of her competence, but a little thrown off by her eerie perceptiveness.

Tony and the god exchanged eloquent glances.

“A few months, this time around,” the inventor admitted.

“ _This_ time?” Steve balked.

“It’s really a very long story, but if it helps, I swear on my life that I mean you no all no harm, so long as none of you try to stop me,” Loki offered. “Also, my elder self from an alternate universe has been advising Asgard for the past five or six months, because the All-Mother apparently thought they could prevent him twisting events to his own ends, for his own reasons, rather than actually helping them achieve a peaceful future for Asgard as he originally offered to them.”

The other Avengers all looked at each other for a few long moments.

“We killed him, if you were wondering,” Tony said. “Well, put him in a jar and sent him to the queen of Hel, to dispose of at her discretion, probably by throwing him back into the old universe he’d been trying to escape, at the worst possible time and place she can find for the purpose. Close enough.”

“You have any plans to take over any worlds these days, Loki?” Steve asked.

“No. I much prefer conquering Tony, thanks.”

The inventor might’ve shifted uncomfortably, but his face turned tellingly a bit red.

“Wow, I never, ever needed that image,” Clint groaned.

Natasha nodded, apparently satisfied, and strode from the room.

The archer and Steve watched her go, brows furrowed, then looked at each other, and then returned their attention to the couple on the couch, who were now shooting them an annoyed glare that silently inquired, “Are you all quite finished, now?”

“We’ll discuss this later, Tony, and I expect the whole story,” Steve sighed.

Tony grimaced a bit. “You’re still getting an abridged version, if only for the sake of your own psyche. You’re welcome, in advance.”

“Great. Fine,” Clint snapped, annoyed and outraged blatantly. “Get a room, though, at least, for fuck’s sake.” He then stormed into the kitchen, where he’d initially been heading toward in the first place.

“A less public one,” Steve emphasized. “Please?”

Tony rolled his eyes and gripped the shoulders of the god under him. “Going up?”

Loki grinned, and vanished them both.

Captain America stared at the couch afterwards, utterly lost. “I... am not even going to think about this for a while. Crazy. All of the people in this tower are _crazy_.”

 

~~

 

Four hours later, Tony was sitting opposite his friend in the breakfast nook, and trying to read the various confused and uncomfortable facial expressions flickering across Steve’s face as he digested all of what the inventor had just told him.

“You... were such an idiot.”

“Yeah, but the contract was soundly written.”

“He still might’ve just killed you.”

“Nah, he was stuck where I’d summoned him, at the time. I made sure of that.”

“You couldn’t have been _that_ sure.”

“Well. I was 90% certain.”

“Tony...”

“I needed it.”

“You needed to be abused?”

“Look, Steve, it’s not about that. It’s about release. It’s about handing over control for a while and letting someone humble my ego. Before I came up with the plan to try and persuade Loki to take up that role, I had a long history of dissatisfaction with my doms, okay? My brain is too fast for most people, too irrepressible, even when I want to submit. I was desperate enough at the time that I was actually vetting a list of everyone I’d ever met, and just made the snap-decision to not exclude villains. I narrowed it down to people who excelled at psychological warfare, as well as those who I knew wouldn’t go too easy on me, and Loki topped all of the lists. He was also selfish and greedy enough to possibly accept the offer, chaotic-neutral enough to appreciate the value of it, and hedonistic enough to be more tempted than most. Plus, I was giving him something he always wanted, at the same time.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“You remember how he was, in those days. He didn’t have a long-game nearly so often as he just wanted to see some heroes suffer and be debased, if he could possibly arrange for it. I just cut out the middle-man, and happen to get off on that sort of thing personally. It was very mutually beneficial, that way.”

Steve made a face.

“You asked.”

“Yes, I did, and I’m trying not to regret it, because it’s clear this is important to you. It’s just going to take a while for me to really process.”

Tony nodded.

“I thought the kid Loki was... Thor told us he didn't know anything about his old life, and that he was an entirely new mind in a familiar but younger shape, still with the same soul. That, uh, didn't sound like the same kid I met those few times, with you earlier today."

"He remembers everything. Maybe the growth-spurt set it off, maybe his old self was too much of a coward to wipe himself out of existence entirely and locked away what he could somehow, and it all only just came back, but he's not just the kid anymore," said the inventor, the half-lie slipping from his tongue with perfect ease. "He's not exactly how he used to be, either."

"Does Thor know?"

Tony nodded. "Yeah. Loki told him, shortly before we, uh, got out of dodge and left them to figure themselves out."

"Did he tell you a different story than he told his brother?"

"Well, yeah, but the key details I told you were the same in each telling." Another lie. Tony wondered if he should feel bad for how easy it felt, to feign conviction, knowing all that he did.

"So he's still the new kid?"

The inventor made a face. "He remembers most of his time from before all of his old memories came back as though he observed them from the outside, is the best way I can think to put it. He's who I remember, but he's also really not. He had a deal with the ruling triumvirate back in Asgardia to erase some of his old stories, his past sins, for every mission he completed for them. The old stories still being around, including all the ones in Earth's databases that he erased, have weight for gods, because gods are made up of stories. He wants to change his. When his old self showed up and swore to Loki's face that he never could, never would, really change, it pissed him off more than anything else has since his rebirth, and I think the shadow of his old self now occupies his personal antagonist slot, instead of Thor or any other heroes around."

"I guess that's progress. If only we could've set him up against himself like that ages ago."

"We couldn't have. He had to learn for himself that it wasn't just himself he'd be fighting, if he really wanted to escape the sort of destiny all of our godly friends and enemies were locked into, before the cycles of Ragnarok were broken."

Steve held his gaze very steadily, then. "You really think he's changed, then."

"I know he has. I know what fighting your own lifelong legacy of bad decisions, and trying to be better, looks like."

"Do you?"

"I own a number of mirrors, Steve."

The ageless old soldier nodded, eyes bright and a bit too shrewd. "You still in that fight?"

Tony winced, but only blamed himself for making his old friend ask. "Yeah. Not alone, either."

"He helps?"

"He helped even long before it was in his best interest."

"And now?"

"Now we help each other. It's worked for about three months so far, even though we couldn't meet in person, or communicate by anything other than his occasional astral projection when he could confirm I wouldn't be interrupted, and neither of us were being watched."

"Right, you mentioned." Steve sighed. "Okay."

"Okay what?"

"We probably couldn't stop either of you if we even tried. For now, I don't think we have to, but we'll be watching."

"I had a feeling."

"You're sure this is what you want?"

A half-smirk tugged at one corner of the inventor's mouth, his lips curving up with it. "Yeah. Yeah, it is."

Steve nodded. "Okay."

"Thank you."

"You give me so many headaches."

"You don't get headaches, Steve."

"I might."

"You don't. I've read your medical records."

"Why?" Steve asked, a little suspicious.

"Well, it was ages ago. Have you started having headaches in the past few years?"

The old soldier sighed. "No. I haven't."

"I knew it."

"You'll tell me, or someone, if he seems too unstable, right?"

At that, Tony visibly hesitated.

"Tony..."

"I'll try to. You know how hard it is for me, when I feel responsible for things."

"You don't get to do that, here. Not if you're letting Loki, of all people, this close to you."

"I'll tell Thor, okay? Scout's honor."

"You were never a scout. Why Thor and not me?"

"I'll try to tell you second, but if the worst happens, the first person I'd ask for help from, with Loki, would be the only person who could probably bring him back, if I can't."

Steve's eyebrows raised. "Wow. That's actually a mature and balanced sort of approach, almost."

"Shaddap."

"You're _genuinely_ serious." His surprise was evident.

Tony glared at him.

"I'm happy for you, actually, that you have someone that valuable to you, again."

At that, the inventor glanced away sharply, the tips of his ears going red. He muttered something under his breath.

"What was that?"

"You're important, too, you all are. All of the Avengers. I just-"

"He gets you. In ways we can't."

"Damn, I hate how freakishly astute you are, sometimes."

"I'm glad he has someone like you who understand what he's fighting as well as you seem to, too."

Tony glanced back up at him, then, only a bit sheepishly. "Thank you."

Steve nodded, and took their two empty coffee mugs to the sink.

Loki then promptly appeared out of thin air, sitting on the edge of the counter right next to the sink, causing the super-soldier to almost reflexively brain him with the first mug he had begun to rinse, but the trickster caught his fist with a still-too-strong-for-any-human grip, and smiled a bit wickedly, eyes bright with mischief. "Sorry, but I really couldn't resist."

"How long have you been there?" Steve snapped.

"The whole time, of course. Tony isn't even surprised, you may note."

"Why would I be?" Tony inquired. "I'd almost be more shocked if you didn't show up. It's so unlike you to miss a dramatic entrance."

The trickster beamed at him sarcastically for a moment before returning his attention to Steve, and schooling his expression into one of more serious curiosity. "Thank you," he said simply, to the soldier.

"Uhm."

"Say 'you're welcome', Steve," the inventor chided.

"I dunno, that sounds suspiciously like a too-open-ended invitation to offer, just now."

"I'm not interested in any new invitations. I attend only to the one, presently," Loki corrected teasingly, nodding in Tony's direction. "Also, you resemble my brother far too much for me to ever be attracted to you. Sorry to disappoint."

As Steve gaped, the inventor could only giggle madly at them both.

Then a sudden, small and localized thunderstorm appeared abruptly, but loudly, around the tower.

The trickster looked a bit uneasy, and let go of Steve quickly, looking torn between fight and flight for only a few moments before he looked over and met Tony's gaze.

The inventor smirked at him. "Looks like it's time for the weekly news, and to start us off: t _he weather._ "

When Loki gave an amused hum at that, the soldier only tisked and finished rinsing out the coffee mugs, as he muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "deserve each other" in an undertone.

"That was what my brother said too," assured the god of mischief. "I think that optimistic in my case. If anything, I deserve to burn, and I do know it." He shrugged, when the soldier shot him a disbelieving look. "Do you not agree?" His tone was casually testing, clearly only as much in earnest as the Captain’s answer might be.

"I don't disagree that you did a lot of unforgivable things, but forgiveness isn't something people get just because they deserve it. Sometimes they need it, before they can really earn it, in order to have an opportunity to change for the better in the first place." He held the trickster's stare, seeing cracks in the mask that made him uneasy, for how visible they were, and how much less full of anger and spite than he remembered, but this was certainly someone much more like the old Loki he had fought against so many times, than the younger one he had seen trailing after Thor and laughing in ways that fell short of true child-like carelessness. The child Thor had found on Earth had been an entirely new Loki, aware he had done wrong, but unable to recall his true motives, drives, and the scope of his own past ambitions, because he had no memories. Steve wondered what happened to that child, exactly, but was almost afraid to ask.

"Don't dare forgive me," the trickster said, his smile suddenly lacking all mirth, making him look far older than he had mere moments before. "Nor do I recommend trusting me. I do not require your trust, and distrust from you is more predictable than the alternative, with which I am infinitely less familiar. It would be safer for all of you to continue to distrust me, except in my dealings with Tony. Should you or any other Avengers try to trust me despite your better judgement, it might honestly interfere with plans I might have put in place in order to keep most of you alive, if somehow we are all under a mutual threat; although that works best if the threat in question believes I've betrayed all of you again and become their ally, which they all seem to _so easily_ believe, these days."

Steve blinked several times, at that. "You do a lot of that lately?"

"Only _perpetually_. My ability to garner trust from people who believe I would happily betray my more heroic companions, and the sincere offense and spite of those whom I appear to betray at such times, have been integral to a number of the successful do-gooder missions I've undertaken so far." He shrugged. "Consider it a super-power of mine. Surely Ms. Romanoff, where she too has been eavesdropping, is aware of the value of such things herself. Are you not?" Loki called, toward one end of the kitchen.

Natasha stepped out of the pantry, looking a bit put out. "I might."

"You so do," Loki chided.

She glared at him

The god only shrugged.

"My privacy is feeling so respected right now," Tony mused.

"You're not even surprised, and you know it," the former assassin deadpanned.

The inventor chuckled. "Well, this is true."

"Do keep them in line. I'm sure you, of all of the Avengers, can keep them in the right frame of mind to survive the likes of myself," Loki said, in Farsi, making Steve frown at him, because he hadn’t learned to speak that language yet. Switching back to All-speak, the god asked him innocently, "What?"

Natasha only nodded to Loki’s comment, and strode over to drag Steve gently out of the room, while he continued to frown at her, and Loki, and send Tony unamused looks.

Watching them go, the inventor couldn't help but grin. "Having fun?"

"Aren't you?" The trickster slid from his perch on the counter and strode over to fold his arms across the back of Tony's chair.

"Yeah. I think so."

"Good." Loki's grin was more sincere, then, his own hesitation and unease again visible. "Good."

Neither of them moved beyond glancing toward the door when it was burst in. They weren’t surprised by it, having first listened to half a minute of loud scuffling in the hall, as Thor pushed his way to the kitchen despite the others attempting to dissuade him with a few diplomatic-sounding warnings.

“Brother,” Thor rumbled.

“Yes?” the trickster batted his eyelashes only once, and didn’t make any move to straighten up from where he insouciantly leaned against the back of Tony’s chair.

“The charges against you are no more, and the All-Mother has ceded the throne back to Odin, primarily to avoid a violent revolution against them, upon word getting out that all those unwilling Aesir you brought back to Asgardia, amongst others, had been victims of an incomplete scheme by a villain very much like you once were.”

“Oh good,” Loki said. “What’s the catch?”

“Odin will not concede any power over his subjects to the Avengers of Midgard. You are summoned home.”

The younger god considered thoughtfully. “I think not. I freed him. I daresay he can deal with myself wandering freely about Midgard awhile. He did _banish_ you here, before, did he not? See, I punish myself,” Loki suggested.

“Loki.”

“ _Thor_.”

“If the charges are dropped, what’s the summons for anyway?” the inventor asked, in tones calm yet sharp.

Thor hesitated.

“That’s precisely why I will not agree to obey it, brother. You gave me a tale of Odin’s meant to send you on your way. Not the truth,” Loki pointed out. “I would know.”

“You are right, I believe. I shall, then, take my time in returning as well. He may do well to come up with something more convincing, if he hopes for efficiency, next time,” Thor suggested.

Tony grinned a bit. “I knew I liked you.”

“Value your life, Stark, and tread carefully,” the Thunderer said.

“You did not just do that,” Loki deadpanned coldly.

Thor shot him a innocent look.

Tony snorted at both of them. “You’re both ridiculous. Also you and me should talk about Midgard’s diplomatic response to Odin’s little baseless request later, okay?”

The blond god nodded. “Indeed.” He then stepped out of the room again, a bit too keenly aware of how possessively his younger brother’s fingers curled in Tony’s hair as the inventor looked up to grin at Loki, all incandescent smugness, which the trickster matched with steely mischief of his own.

Thor was honestly relieved to close the door and block out sight of whatever ensued after Loki dragged the man’s chin up sharply and bent down to bite at his mouth. He could have gone the rest of eternity without seeing that.

However, the two reckless sometimes-traitors behind the door, clearly, could handle one another, and he felt oddly comfortable, and perhaps even reassured, upon leaving the room to let them get right back to it.


End file.
